The UK’s gas stores have fallen “concerningly low” after freezing temperatures across Britain significantly boosted demand, the owner of British Gas has warned.
Centrica said the UK “has less than a week of gas demand in store” and that Britain’s storage sites are 26 per cent lower than they were at the same time last year, leaving them around half full.
Gas supplies have come under strain after a cold snap across the UK and the end of Russian gas pipeline supplies through Ukraine at the end of last month.
Chris O’Shea, group chief executive of Centrica, said that levels are “concerningly low”. He added: “We are an outlier from the rest of Europe when it comes to the role of storage in our energy system and we are now seeing the implications of that.”
The firm’s Rough gas storage site, a depleted field off England’s east coast, makes up around half of the country’s gas storage capacity.
The storage site has supplied almost 420 million cubic meters of gas since early November, enough to heat three million homes every day.
Gas storage was already lower than usual heading into December as a result of the early onset of winter, the firm said. This, combined with “stubbornly high” gas prices, has made it more difficult to increase storage over Christmas.
Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, added the situation is echoed across Europe. On Tuesday, European storage was at 69 per cent capacity, down from 84 per cent at the same time the previous year.
The company’s warning comes just a day after millions of Britons came within a “whisker” of being plunged into darkness on one of the coldest nights of the year.
The National Energy System Operator (Neso) had asked power plant owners to generate an extra 1,700 megawatts of power on Wednesday evening to meet the demand to power homes across the UK.
In response to the shortages, the prime minister’s spokesperson said the government is confident the UK has “sufficient gas supply and electricity capacity to meet demand this winter”.
“We speak regularly with the National Energy System Operator to monitor our energy security and ensure they have all tools at their disposal if needed to secure our supply,” he added.
“Our mission to deliver clean power by 2030 will replace our dependency on unstable fossil fuel markets with clean, homegrown power controlled in Britain, which is the best way to protect bill payers and boost our energy independence.”
Reports the UK has been on the verge of an energy blackout are “not true”, they added.
Mr O’Shea said the clean energy transition would mean the UK needs more energy storage systems to help meet demand.
He said: “Energy storage is what keeps the lights on and homes warm when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, so investing in our storage capacity makes perfect economic sense.
“We need to think of storage as a very valuable insurance policy.”
